rockskon

They were just bringing levity to an otherwise depressing topic.

What a fascinating video. What a treat to hear him talk.

Much of my excitement has been dying off due to the commercialization of the hacker community, the culture war, and the constant legislative losses for privacy and effective ownership of goods you purchase because they've code in them you often cannot legally circumvent the "digital lock" on.

I'm curious what can be done to get it back. It seems the more I care, the more I get jaded due to the constant loss of freedom with tech.

Do you have a specific example on the wiki you can cite for your grievance?

So long as it wasn't something that changed due to a firmware update after purchase, sure.

One of the most common grievances on ConsumerRightsWiki is when the terms of the sale seem to change after you've already purchased the product.

Because if you want to convince someone away from believing it's an addiction so severe it needs an act of government to address, presenting an argument that all-but-panders to their "people spend so much time on it that it must be an addiction!" priors is counter productive.

"You can stop smoking at any time"

"You can stop gambling at any time"

As much as I may agree with you, you need a different argument.

"Too good of a product" is an odd way to put it when you could apply the same logic to slot machines.

Seems a bit premature to attribute that solely (or even primarily) to Flock.

It also begs the question of if there is a deterrent effect from cameras to commit homicide, couldn't that deterrent be achieved with a far less controversial technology?

Hard disagree. Checking the accelerometer to disable tactile functionality when moving would have been a more intelligent way to go about discouraging this behavior over mandating use of a historically unpopular technology (Siri) in order to use a popular one (Maps, Bluetooth music streaming).

This reeks of the metrics-gaming desperation that we've seen in Google, Amazon, and Microsoft as well.

Shoehorn unpopular technology to gatekeep popular technology. Either way the consumer's quality of life goes down.

Nice strawman you're attacking. Kinda weird that you're arguing with yourself at this point.

Newer websites are filtered through what is acceptable from a corporate lens.

The old web culture can't exist because advertisers won't let it exist on modern platforms.

Additionally the spread of information is significantly less organic because of relentless pushes to use algorithmic feeds along with far worse distractions from content than there used to be.

I noticed that website doesn't show the absolute numbers involved in search engine use.

And you ignored the part where I said "they use the default".

That's for multiple reasons - many of them directly being Google's fault with intentional choices made towards this end.

Bing because it's the default on their web browsers they've used in college and work.

But moreso - whatever the default is what they use. They have zero attachment to Google.

Do you think there's a realistic future where the money paid for EA could possibly be recouped with product placement?

Once upon a time it would've been unthinkable for Google search to become awful and nearly worthless due, in large part, by Google's discretionary choices.

Related - interns these days don't seem to have any particular preference for using Google for finding information...

Cultural influence though?

Are you going to have MAGA Madden?

The Socialist League?

What a waste of Saudi money.

Who exactly will be cleaning and sanitizing these self-driving cars that are getting this 50%-or-greater utilization?

ETA until a drone pepper sprays an innocent student or teacher?

What of most of the rest of the US economy thats keeps trying to shoehorn AI into their workflows and, more importantly, whose stock prices are buoyed by the prospect of theoretical AI-related productivity gains?

It is unlikely that a 50% drop in NVidia wouldn't be paired with a significant drop in the valuation of every other company heavily invested in AI.

Except AI has an unacceptably high rate of hallucinations that will result in adverse health outcomes if not outright death.

> I should have clarify, I'm part of a local group, itself part of a network of groups.

Which is great! Though my understanding is a big weakness of the ACLU/EFF/etc... crowd is that they typically pigeonhole themselves. The ACLU immolated its hard-earned partisan-but-principled reputation in the past decade and the EFF has a reputation of keeping non-lefty-libertarians at a very long arm's length away.

Beyond that - those groups tend to be sclerotic in their coalition membership. That inflexibility isn't always great!

Take the (largely) Progressive-funded Effective Altruist movement - in particular the Center for AI Safety. They are single-minded in their political goals, going so far as to enlist the help of Glenn Beck and Steve-Bannon-associate Joe Allen. They have spun off additional organizations to cater their pro-AI-regulation framing and messaging to different audiences: conservative and biblical messaging to evangelicals, fighting social media disinformation and fascism to progressives, and a hefty dose of civic grassroots rhetoric for their social media presence.

They have goals and are willing to make unsavory temporary alliances if it means enacting regulation.

I do not see such an appetite to influence politics from most of internet civil liberties organizations.

> I should have clarify sorry: I live in the US. That seems unlikely, to say the least.

And? Corporate lobbyists do this lobbying-by-proxy crap with decent regularity. Heck - Nintendo is known to have laundered some of its lobbying through NCMEC years back and credit card companies and banks have long laundered their wishlist through various LEAs. Turns out if you get a bureaucrat to convince FBI leadership of the importance of your pet cause and the nexus it has to their agency, legislative pushes in Congress tends to follow.

That all said - it works both ways and not necessarily with any negative connotations. The DoJ and FTC in administrations-past have had representatives come to hacker conventions to describe the collaborative efforts they've had with members of the community - to include lobbying congress for legislative change.

Getting government agencies on your side as a partner in affecting policy change is relevant only if the change is seen as relevant to a given agency's mission.

And what sort of regulations did you have in mind that don't primarily punish the users?

The social media you don't want will continue to scale.

Meta is publicly posting ads in Europe promoting age verification, so yes Meta is a part of the problem.

I find that particularly unrealistic that we can arrive at a good place solely by fining companies for data breaches.

As cynical as it sounds given its frequent use in marketing and often inappropriate use in legal circles, securing what data is collected is important too.

Raise the bar for a data breach. It has value. Much more value if the law did a much better job of restricting what is collected in the first place and its dissemination.

Not every lawmaker is the same and there's more than one way to get a lawmaker's attention.

Get more people with you. Or convince a group that's previously established trust in your jurisdiction to join you in speaking out. Or find out what causes the policymakers do care about and think of a compelling way to frame arguments against age verification in those terms. Heck - if you can get a local government agency to officially back you up, all the better.

There's more to politics than just going to town hall meetings or sending emails or making phone calls!